Software Licensing - Manually add preset license keys

Many users purchase our Software Licensing extension to take advantage of automatic updating functionality. While updates are the focal point of the extension, they only work because Software Licensing has the ability to generate license keys. Through those license keys, communication between customer and store is made possible.

With that understanding, it becomes clear that Software Licensing will generate license keys at the time of purchase regardless of whether or not the license key is intended to be used for updating purposes. In other words, Software Licensing can be used just for generating a unique license key for every purchase.

In that scenario, a unique, 32-digit alphanumeric code will be generated for each purchase. But you may also choose to provide you own license keys to be distributed with each purchase.

Providing your own preset license keys

Once you have Software Licensing installed on your store site and you have enabled licensing for a product, take note of the Preset License Keys section.

There, you can enter your own keys that each purchase will pull from. Each key will be pulled from the top of the list and will no longer be available to purchasers once issued. Your list could look something like this:

customkey1 customkey2 customkey3 customkey4 customkey5

It is important to note that once your custom license keys have been exhausted, Software Licensing will automatically begin generating its own license keys again. There are only two ways to prevent this from happening:

keep adding custom keys to the list so that they do not run out.

use our Purchase Limit extension to ensure that the number of keys you have remaining always matches the number of remaining purchases allowed.

With the information covered in this article, you can use Software Licensing just for distributing custom license keys at the time of purchase.